COMPARISON OF FOUR CHEMOTHERAPY REGIMENS FOR ADVANCED NON-SMALL-CELL LUNG CANCER

The response rate for all 1155 eligible pa-tients was 19 percent, with a median survival of 7.9months (95 percent confidence interval, 7.3 to 8.5), a1-year survival rate of 33 percent (95 percent confi-dence interval, 30 to 36 percent), and a 2-year surviv-al rate of 11 percent (95 percent confidence interval,8 to 12 percent). The response rate and survival didnot differ significantly between patients assigned toreceive cisplatin and paclitaxel and those assigned toreceive any of the three experimental regimens. Treat-ment with cisplatin and gemcitabine was associatedwith a significantly longer time to the progression ofdisease than was treatment with cisplatin and pacli-taxel but was more likely to cause grade 3, 4, or 5 re-nal toxicity (in 9 percent of patients, vs. 3 percent ofthose treated with cisplatin plus paclitaxel). Patientswith a performance status of 2 had a significantlylower rate of survival than did those with a perform-ance status of 0 or 1.